Scenes From One Dad’s Foxhole

Birthdays mean things. At 16 you get your driver’s license. And for awhile, and also for the only time in your life – you think its cool to drive a ’81 Volkswagen Rabbit. A beige one with a stick shift that only takes diesel. Bad ass, I know. At 21 you get to over pay for beers at the bar. And nothing says adulthood like paying more for something you could have done on your own with a little patience and planning. Nothing really special happened on my 30th. I was already married and had a kid so turning 30 just seemed like a day. On my 40th Mom and I had a party since we both turned 40 within a month of each other. We had a local place make us a couple big trays of barbecue while one of our friends brought over burnt ends. And listen, after several beers, that stuff is quite possibly the greatest food you’ve ever tasted.

Anyway, I recently turned 47. Which really isn’t anything special. Doesn’t feel any different from any of my other recent birthdays. Aside from Mel Blount wearing #47 and being responsible for the NFL rules changes that allow the modern passing game, it isn’t an especially great number. I was, however, pretty damned determined to kick 47’s ass.

So we made some plans with some good friends. They picked us up and we drove back to their house. Why? The key advantage of the location of their house is that you can walk to the bar. A place called Taco Hangover. At 3:00 in the afternoon. On a Friday. So, two things:

1-I’d like a little appreciation for our mature decision to not drive. To not even have a vehicle at the bar.

2-Taco Hangover puts a laxative in its tacos.

Not sure how that makes for repeat customers but somewhere in their business model is a flow chart on how to make tacos and it includes a laxative. Soft flour tortilla, chicken, stool softener/bowel stimulant, shredded cheese, etc. The catch is that their tacos are awesome. Seriously. Bacon, egg and cheese tacos. Kansas City burnt ends tacos. Chorizo and crispy potato tacos. They even have sloppy joe tacos. And listen, the tacos need to be awesome because you can’t get Miller Lite Tall Boys on the patio. I know, I’m sitting there wondering if we’re in communist Russia or a bar in red, white and blue middle America…that sells laxative laden tacos. Regardless, you did read that correctly. No Miller Lite tall boys. How the hell does that happen? Friday afternoon ice cold tall boys on the patio is about as midwest American as you can get. The really infuriating thing was that if I wanted to – although I can’t imagine a scenario in which this would happen unless it gave me the power of invisibility – I could get Pabst Blue Ribbon in a tall boy. I’m just spit ballin’ here but nobody really wants extra PBR. Nobody. And that’s what you get in a PBR tall boy. Because of the outright and inexcusable lack of proper fridge stocking, I was forced to consume Coors Light. In a tall boy. And by forced I mean I wasn’t. I could have had a normal regulation size draw of Miller Lite in the typical plastic cup required on patios. But everybody else, including Mom at one point, is drinking tall boys and I’m not sure if you realize this, but tall boys have more beer in them. Again, just spit ballin’ here but you know who likes more beer? Everybody.

So as the day wears on and we have various conversations, including my agreeing to go a Flo Rida concert with Mom, we order tacos. And a continuing flow of beers. And, I’m not necessarily proud – or ashamed – of this but we put those away faster than Billy Idol was pumping fists in the Flesh for Fantasy video.

Mom tapped out first. Got ride home from a friend. About an hour later, I was done. Was about ready to get in the same friend’s car as she had recently arrived back at the patio after dropping Mom off and the taco effect suddenly become apparent to me.

So I did what anybody else would have done. I bombed the bathroom.

Then I went home. Upon my arrival I ask Mom how she’s doing – and just for reference sake it was still light out – and Mom informs me that she bombed our bathroom.

While we both felt pretty damn good afterwards, the effect of the beers hadn’t been evicted from our systems. It was about this time that Kinz comes into our room and asks if her friend – a boy – could come over for a few hours. My answer? “Sure.”

Her response? “Ok, but you’re going to have to talk to his Dad when he drops him off.”

My response to that? “Ummm…you should ask Mom to do that.”

From the bedroom we hear, “No she shouldn’t!”

So it’s up to me to somehow behave like a responsible parent so this kid isn’t banned from our house because I wanted to kick 47’s ass.

Short while later – and after another visit or two to the bathroom – the kid and his Dad are at our door. We introduce ourselves. And then…

“Hey so I need to go through my whole deal here since we haven’t been to your house before.”

“Yeah, okay.”

“Any alcohol in the house?”

I sorta tilted my head slightly and said, “Yeah…but they’re not going to drink any of it.”

“Any firearms in the house?”

I’m thinking, sure okay, this is a legit question. I guess I could be Bob Lee Swagger. I might be slamming beers while I make my own ammo out back.

“Nope, no firearms.”

“Any explosives in the house?”

“You’ll have to be more specific. Do you mean military, commercial or recreational?”

No I didn’t really say that. But I’d never been asked – ever – if there were any explosives in my house. Do people stock explosives? I’m not counting fireworks. Where do you even purchase them if you were to stock them? Because if this is a thing, I kinda would like to know that too.

And listen I get the first question. I’m not going to ask it because I’m assuming it to be true in nearly every house in America. I also understand the second question. And maybe I should be asking that too. Maybe we all should. Or maybe we shouldn’t. Alcohol and firearms aren’t illegal. Often dangerous when used in concert but not illegal.

But even weirder than the questions was I’m answering them after spending the last 5 hours at the bar drinking Coors Light tall boys while eating laxative tacos talking about going to the Flo Rida concert.

Time travel is cool. And thanks to the magic of Youtube it is possible.

I can’t be the only person who has sat down and watch an episode or two of Magnum, P.I. and Riptide on Youtube. I mean c’mon, Nick and Cody lived on a freaking boat in L.A.! Nor can I be the only one who has watched the Monday Night Football game from October 20, 1980 between the Raiders and the Steelers when we all realized the dynasty was over. And there’s no way I’m alone watching old MTV videos. Now, don’t get me wrong, if given the choice I’m watching old NFL Films highlights all day. And maybe a couple of the Riptide episodes when the all-female crew of the Barefoot Contessa were featured. But if you really want to go back in time, go watch the videos.

Like this doesn’t take you right back to the May of ’83?

How about May of ’85?

May of ’87?

But here’s the thing, it is still just a video. You’re not there. Granted, you’re experiencing nostalgia at awesome levels. Actual time travel, while elusive, is possible. You can get there.

Again, if you went to high school or college with me in the 80’s and early 90’s, this might make some sense…especially after watching that Poison video. Mom and I went to Def Leppard, Poison and Tesla a few weeks ago. Five years ago we went to a similar version of this concert when we saw Def Leppard, Poison and Lita Ford. The common factor – I mean besides the fact that Phil Collen is like 57 years old and still doesn’t wear a damn shirt – is going to these concerts is like experiencing an awesome time machine. Its like you’re in one big giant DeLorean. I love going. Because just for a few hours, you’re back! Which, at our ages, is really all we can handle at this point anyway.

You get into the arena and you immediately do two things that you didn’t do in high school or your first couple years of college. You go buy a couple of these:

That’s $18 worth of Miller Lite right there. You need a salary and health insurance to afford these. You don’t have that in high school or college.

Then you buy a $36 concert t-shirt because its freaking worth it. Here’s mine:

After you get your second 25 oz Miller Lite you head to your seats. The first beer is a walking beer. Meaning its the beer you drink while walking to get your sweet new concert tee. Once in your seats I always take a look around at the folks sitting in my immediate area. I like to know who will be rocking it old school with me, flashing the horns and belting out every single freaking lyric. Who are my co-pilots on this awesome journey back to the late 80’s and early 90’s? Also its good to get a feel for those who won’t be doing that so you have an idea who you are going to be annoying for next 3 hours or so.

Tesla is first. I wanted to hear 4 songs – Getting Better, Little Suzi, Signs and What You Give. Ending up hitting .500 as they left the stage without singing Getting Better and What You Give. And I gotta be honest, it felt a little empty without hearing Getting Better. But…Little Suzi, well she’s on the up. It was awesome. And the only person who probably liked it better than me was the woman in the row below us and off to the right who was absolutely rocking. She was belting out those lyrics so loud she was shaming the rest of us. We became immediate friends.

When they hit the first few chords of Signs there was an impressive roar from the Gen X dominated crowd. And we clearly – CLEARLY – preferred the unedited version as we sang, “So I made up my f*#&ing sign!”

Poison was next. And Bret Michaels obviously understands who his audience is. No messing around with their new stuff. Listen, it was a good thing they can dial it back a bit with Every Rose Has Its Thorn and Something to Believe In because I probably would have needed to take a knee just to regroup. Ride the Wind, Fallen Angel and then Nothing But A Good Time…I was exhausted. I mean that’s A LOT of air guitar. My fingers were cramping up. Plus Nothing But A Good Time is synonymous with the summer of ’88…along with my sweet ’81 diesel Volkswagen Rabbit, Stroh Light and the Lakers going back to back.

Then Def Leppard.

Def Leppard dominated my senior year of high school. Dominated. Like Markie Post’s hotness dominated the set of Night Court. Sure Micheal Jackson got in there with Man in the Mirror and David Lee Roth kicked our asses with Just Like Paradise and Arnold Schwarzenegger was in every freaking movie. Anybody else think they should remake The Running Man? No? Just me then. Anyway, point being Def Leppard was awesome in the ’87-’88 school year and they are still awesome. Armaggedon It is a like flamethrower showering us with late 80’s nostalgia. Plus it melts your face off. Pour Some Sugar On Me hits you like city bus filled with all your high school memories. Like the time my buddy Pete almost blew his finger off in the front seat of my car as he lit a bottle rocket that recorded a total travel distance of his side of the dashboard to mine and then exploded. Or The Longest Day (Feb. 27, 1988) when my buddies and I, allegedly, used fake IDs to load up at EJ’s Liquors to keep us hydrated throughout an entire Saturday.

It all hits you. You feel it. And for a few fleeting instances, you’re there. You’re really there. And then you realize you’ve spent $54 dollars on a six pack of 25 oz Miller Lites and you have to be up early to make sure your 7th grader has a ride to school.

I’ve never run a marathon. Never been through Navy Seal training. Never had to listen to a full speech from Elizabeth Warren. All these things require endurance. And in the case of the last example the ability to suppress audible laughter. Staying awake also requires endurance. Because staying awake can be hard. It doesn’t matter if you’re watching golf, listening to Ed Sheeran, or staying at work for nearly 24 consecutive hours.

Stop me if this also happened to you a couple weeks ago. You show up at work at 8 a.m. Friday morning. With me so far? Then you leave work at 7:15…a.m. Saturday morning. Sound fun? How about this – starting Monday morning April 17 and ending Saturday morning April 22, I put in exactly 80 hours at work. Which made me curious as to how many hours actually passed between the time I arrived that Monday morning and when I made it home alive the following Saturday. There are only 119.25 hours in that time frame. 80 hours at work, 39ish hours for everything else. That includes about 25 hours for sleep.

You may be asking yourself how dumb my job is. Fair question. April is normally my busiest month. By the time we finish up the busy season I usually reset my personal bests for caffeine consumption use of the “f” word. But lots of people have busy jobs, busy lives with kids’ activities and other assorted bullsh*t. Mine all just happened on the same freaking day.

On my drive home I was trying to do some rudimentary math because I suck at it and because I had a pretty busy Saturday about to commence. I’ll get home about 7:20, Bails softball schedule for Saturday is 8, 9:30, 2, 3:30. Also happened to be Prom weekend for Rye. Pics downtown at 5:30. Then Mom stupidly volunteered for the After Prom Committee so we have to pick up subs from Jersey Mike’s at 8:45 and be at the high school at 9. Then work the After Prom party until…wait for it…3 a.m. Then be up at 6 a.m. Sunday to get to the softball fields by 7 a.m. for another set of games at 8 and 9:30. Once that’s done I needed to mow the lawn because it looked like Vietnam out there.

I walk into the house and two things are of the utmost importance. 1) I’m hungry. 2) I have never wanted out of a jacket and tie this much in my life. Not even when I went through first communion back in ’78 and I had one of those clip-on ties and those little blue sport coats that make every other Mom comment on your cuteness. No boy wants comments on his cute mini-me grown up clothes. Its uncomfortable. Anyway, after eating what was easily the best two pieces of toast I’ve ever tasted in my life and shedding my work clothes I got in bed.

Now I’m sure there are some super Dads out there who in the name of proper parenting would’ve thrown on jeans and a sweatshirt and headed right out to the 8:00 softball game because nothing is more important than showing your kids that they are your #1 priority and you’d do anything for them.

Turns out I’m not that guy. Adversity struck and I hit the sack faster than the donations to the Clinton Foundation dried up the day after the election.

Two things though – 1) once you’ve missed your sleep window, its not that easy to force yourself into a peaceful slumber, and 2) the brightness of the morning sun spikes your aggravation levels to unhealthy heights.

So I, and I’m not exaggerating, totally buried myself under blankets and pillows in order to simulate darkness. Worked for a couple hours until Mom, Bails and Kinz got home after the first two games with Chinese food for lunch.

I made my way downstairs and without warning attacked the egg rolls. I looked like a wood chipper clearing a street after a tornado. Instead of sawdust it was remnants of egg rolls and fried rice.

Then it was out to the softball fields for the last two games of the day. Its weird how Saturday feels when you really didn’t have a normal Friday. My Fridays in the spring normally consist of me getting home, drinking more than one can of the variety of summer seasonal beers I like to populate my basement fridge with, watching Youtube videos of classic NFL games from the 70’s and 80’s and then waiting for Mom to get home. Its a tried and true system that has consistently served me well. So not only was I knocked off my routine but I was working on 2 hours of sleep fueled only by grocery store Chinese food. I surprised myself with my coherence. Didn’t have too much trouble speaking in complete sentences. But eliminating the “f” word from your normal parlance is difficult after it becomes so culturally accepted in nearly every setting when you’re at work for 23.5 consecutive hours. Normally walking into a room at work and asking, “Who is the asshat who called this f*&$ing meeting?” isn’t a thing that is heard without eliciting some kind of response. But that’s what happens. Unfortunately that doesn’t translate to a 14U softball game. You can’t sit there behind home plate and comment in a conversational volume that, “this f*&$ing ump couldn’t find his ass with both hands, no chance he finds the strike zone. He’s missed a f*&$load of calls already.”

So I decided to be silent with my feedback. And I was able to stay awake…but the 5 or 6 Diet Pepsi’s probably had something to do with that.

Last game ends and we head for home for about 30 minutes to be there in time for Rye’s date to pick her up before we head downtown for Prom pics…

I like Santa. He’s a jolly old fat man with a snowy white beard. He’s about giving, hope and faith. He represents the best in all of us and asks nothing in return. He shows up regardless of the weather, regardless of how you voted in November and regardless of whether you believe in him or not.

Christmas is the season, to paraphrase Frank Cross, when we’re all a little nicer.

Theoretically anyway.

Mom was in Omaha and Lincoln for most of last week. And her side of the family came to the house over the weekend to celebrate an early Christmas. Plus Rogue One came out Friday. Yeah, so Friday morning was pretty much shot when it came to cleaning up the house and making food along with all the other related holiday preparedness chores necessary to accomplish when family is about to arrive.

So that means it fell upon me to get the place ready. I unilaterally modified that task to mostly ready. Why? Because I’m a simple dude. And a lot of stuff that some people think are necessary, I don’t. But listen, we kicked Christmas’ ass decorating this place. It looks freaking awesome. Our family room looks like HG-freaking-TV was here. Chip and Joanna, when they’re not fighting off the leftwing twitter lynch mob, would be proud. The house smells like a yuletide log filled with mistletoe and sugarplums, delivered to the house by a one-horse open sleigh driven by eleven lords-a-leaping, exploded leaving an exquisite ensemble of poinsettias, silver bells and a sea of swirly twirly gum drops. It’s like Santa himself detailed the Seal Team 6 of elves to come get the place ready for the holidays. So I figured as long as the house is clean, the beer is cold and there is enough food to prevent starvation, we’d be set.

Yes, there were a few things left to clean up after we got home from watching Rogue One. But it was Rogue One. What the hell were we supposed to do? Wait until next weekend to see it? Here’s a pic of me getting ready to watch.

First one in the theater baby!

Regardless, I was on top of making sure the house was ready. Thursday night, whilst cleaning up the basement, I thought I’d get all the laundry done too. Seemed reasonable. However, there are three teenage girls in the house. Things which are of deathly importance to them do not always rise to that same level with me.

So, I’m doing the laundry and various clean up related tasks. I’m about done and getting ready to call the evening’s prep work a win and just go to bed when Rye comes into the bedroom.

“Dad, when you were doing laundry did you go into my room and take anything?”

“Are you asking did I pick up any of the clothes that were strewn about your floor? No, I didn’t. I asked if you had any laundry you wanted done and you specifically said no. I chose to believe you.”

“Ok, well it was Kinsey then.”

“Wait, what was Kinsey?”

“Well, my Lulu Lemon tights got washed in the washer and they are only supposed to be hand washed.”

Quick point of context – Lulu Lemon is the brand that sells tights/leggings that are about $700. I’m kidding but Rye did save up a bunch of money this summer specifically to buy leggings that were about $100. Yes, $100 American dollars. They are so precious but also evidently constructed so poorly that they can’t cannot survive a routine cycle in a washing machine and instead can only endure 19th century clothes washing technology.

“Sorry about that kiddo but I just put whatever whatever was in the darks pile into the washing machine. I didn’t look to see what was in the pile because I figure if you guys made the rare decision to put your own dirty laundry in the laundry room I was just going to go ahead assume you were serious about that stuff getting washed. I just unloaded the washer and hung up 3 or 4 pairs of black tights or leggings or whatever. Nothing like that got put in the dryer.”

“Okay, well, Kinsey must have put them in the laundry on purpose. I hate her.”

Then she went into Kinsey’s room, blamed her, and then went back into her room and started crying.

So much for there being a feeling of Christmas in the air. But that is how the mind of 17 year-old upset about her ridiculously expensive black leggings being washed glitches when upset. She doesn’t think that she may have inadvertently put them in the wrong pile, or absent mindedly picked them up with something else off her floor, instead she tried to pin the blame on me. When it was obvious that wouldn’t work, she seamlessly transitioned to blaming her sister, for no other reason than malice, for trying to purposely ruin them.

I mean what was Kinsey’s motive? What did she have to gain by going into Rye’s room, searching for the Lulu Lemon leggings and then sneakily placing them in the pile of dirty laundry in the laundry room. Where’s the payoff?

After getting blamed, Kinsey comes into my room looking like the media on election night. She confusedly asks me if I knew what Rye was talking about. We went through a quick recap and Kinz says, “Why would I do that? That literally makes no sense.” Aside from acknowledging her use of “literally” in a relatively appropriate way, I just told her to ignore Rye and go to bed.

Which, if I’m being honest, is my go to strategy when dealing with the three teenage girls in my house…

So I walk into the gas station down the street from our new house to get my 44 oz. Diet Pepsi which I get nearly every morning on the way to work. If you’re a pop nazi and feel a burning need to start lecturing me about all the horribly destructive stuff pop does to my teeth and esophagus, well, suck it. I’m drinking it. If Hillary is elected she’ll outlaw it anyway. My beloved 44 ouncer costs $1.06. I go in with exact change every morning. What? I have too much change in my truck and I’m trying to get rid of it. Seriously. I bet my gas mileage improves with every 44 ouncer I buy. Not to mention the fact that I like to pay with cash (or coins when applicable). Why? Because it’s nobody’s business what, when or how often I buy stuff. Corporate America and the government ain’t tracking my consumer purchases!

Anyway, the pop costs $1.06. Until today. I reach over to hand the guy behind the counter my $1.06 and he says “$1.58.”

Upon recognition of my look of both dismay and resigned realization of the inevitability of a cost increase, he – not surprisingly – says, “Price went up today.”

No sh*t.

I give him a $1.60, which isn’t exact change, and I leave. I mean, they got me. I’m going to this gas station to get pop. I’m not changing my morning routine. I like routines. They eliminate decisions. And right now, at work, I’m making decisions all freaking day. So in the morning I don’t want to have to add unneeded and unnecessary decisions to an already decisiony day. So the question is, “who decided that 52 cent increase was justified for my 44 oz pop?”

I’m blaming Obamacare. It has raised the cost of everything. And Hillary. Any day now there will be an email released detailing her role in the price increase. Probably Kurt Cobain and all those assholes in Seattle who killed hair metal had something to do with it too. The idiot who brought Emerald Ash Borer to the Midwest and killed all the ash trees is guilty too. And while I’m at it…George Atkinson for prematurely ending Lynn Swann’s career due to concussions. The mid-90’s for the general suckitude of the music. Francisco Cabrera. Smartphones. The creators of MTV’s The Real World for coming up the genre of reality TV. Millennials. Big 10 commissioner Jim Delaney. And whoever is responsible for the death of Saturday morning cartoons.

Seven weeks in the new house. I know everybody tells you moving is a huge hassle, and the truth is…its worse. Unless, of course, you’re old neighbors were Keith Olbermann, Bill Belichick and Elizabeth Warren. Then moving is glorious. But outside of that, moving just sucks. Not along the lines of working in a coal mine in the early 1900’s, watching golf or being a Bengals fan but still pretty crappy. I’m still somewhat, but not totally, amazed that we actually pulled it off.

The main reason we moved was sheer square footage. In the new house, each girl has her own room and now they have two bathrooms to fight over instead of one. But, and this is key, there are three sinks. In case you’re having trouble with the math, that means each kid can be in front of a sink at the SAME FREAKING TIME. Literally, not figuratively, life changing. The garage is bigger so now we don’t have to play musical chairs with the cars every morning to get out of the garage/driveway and lastly, the basement is now big enough that the girls can invite more than one friend over at a time.

But some things simply don’t change.

Millenials suck. Skynet will eventually become self-aware. And the girls still steal each other’s clothes and shoes and deny it happened.

They’re like Soviet diplomats in the 80’s. Did you take Rye’s shirt and wear it to school? I’m sorry, I’m not sure I understand the question. But if I did accurately understand it, I have no knowledge of any shirt, let alone the shirt in question. Furthermore you have provided nothing that demonstrates my involvement and I am forced to conclude that this is yet another attempt by a corrupt and greedy western system to undermine the proletariat.

Also, they refuse to put their shoes in their rooms. Refuse! Now, see if you can follow me here – they get ticked off at each other when one of them absconds with a pair of shoes that is not their own. They complain – loudly – and insist on the involvement of Mom and I to officiate the annoyance and then keep score regarding the number of times their shoes have been pilfered. Keeping their own shoes in their own rooms provides a degree of security that the small area in front of the door to garage does not. Yet that is where the shoes end up. It’s as if their wi-fi connectivity depends on their shoes not being in their rooms. Their actions can only be construed as an outright repudiation of the principals of The Drop Zone. As I’ve previously mentioned, our new house has this sweet drop zone as you walk in from the garage. It has three hooks, a bench and plenty of space beneath the bench to TEMPORARILY locate 4 pairs of shoes. Maybe 5 if they’re small. Plus right next to the drop zone, and I mean literally right next to it, is a coat closet. So shoes, jackets, backpacks all have a place in which they can be put. None of those places can, in any reasonable way, be misinterpreted as piling them on top of each other in such a manner than they resemble the county dump. I have to use the door to the garage as a snow plow to push the shoes out of my way when I get home. Bails has more shoes in the drop zone than she does in her closet. Not kidding. I asked her why all her shoes on in the drop zone instead of in her closet. Her answer?

“How am I supposed to know what shoes I’m going to want to wear everyday? It’s easier if they’re all just downstairs.”

So, in case you’re not following along, her convenience is the primary directive on which we’re operating.

I think Missing Persons pretty much nailed my conclusions in their 1982 new wave hit Words.

“Do you hear me, Do you care…I might as well go up and talk to a wall ’cause all the words are having no effect at all…What are words for when no one listens it’s no use talkin at all…My lips are moving and the sound’s coming out, The words are audible but I have my doubts.”

I live in a house with 4 other people. All girls. They have lots of things. Sarcasm and hair top the list. I’ll take some of the blame for sarcasm. I speak it fluently. I may have passed on that gene. Or they might just all be teenagers. But when it comes to clogged shower drains or blocked bathroom sinks, I’m not at fault. I could be standing in a category 5 hurricane and my hair would give you no indication. None. That being said, we do share one thing. Hot water.

When I was a kid, I grew up in a house with 4 other people. In college I shared a house with 4 other dudes. Hot water was a commodity. Like sincerity in a speech by Ted Cruz. The size, age and efficiency of your water heater helped dictate the acuteness of your hot water radar. Over the years I believe I have developed a relatively strong sense of how much hot water is available based on the hot water related activities going on in the house. It’s kinda like the noise level on the second floor when Mom and I are watching TV in the family room. There is a level of noise, an intensity of clamor, a degree of hullabaloo that we don’t notice. It’s not that we’re ignoring it, but after many years of parenting we have developed an acute sense of when something is amiss and when something is just…well…the girls “talking” to each other. We’re aware of what’s going on but we pay it no attention. Like any statement from Hillary suggesting competence in regards to her foreign policy experience. If you haven’t seen 13 Hours in Benghazi you should. However, there is a simple rule of thumb that is rarely if ever unreliable. When it comes to showers and house full of people, you want to be first.

Sometimes this will require you to wake up early.

Other times it will require you to shower at odd times.

Or you can just get in line and hope for the best.

I have no sympathy for you if you continually chose #3 and bitch about cold water. That’s like getting into a discussion about hair metal with a millennial and expecting wisdom. Or telling them that the Ghost video from Ella Henderson bears a striking similarity to Warrant’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin? Just me? Whatever…

Anyway, recently, Kinz comes barreling down the stairs to let us know that Rye and Bails have used all the hot water. They are, and I’m paraphrasing here, inconsiderate jerks with no appreciation or respect for widely agreed upon rules of hot water consumption. Now we all have our burdens to bear. The ’83 Steelers had Cliff Stoudt at quarterback. Hans Gruber had John McClane. Thundarr the Barbarian had the vile sorcerer Sabien. It can be tough out there.

But this is not one of those burdens. This is an inconvenience. A burden is supervising John Bender in detention on a Saturday. This is a lesson in the art of acting quickly. A lesson in immediately diagnosing a situation, devising a plan of action, and then acting on that plan. Joshua Chamberlain did it on Little Round Top and Kinz needs to do it here.

But Kinz has yet to learn an important lesson. Over the years I have learned not to complain if I get there and the water temperature is less than what I expected. Because in reality, you only have two options – bitch about it. Which isn’t going to make the water any hotter but could make the rest of day less enjoyable as your family dismisses your plight the same way Higgins would dismiss Magnum’s need to the drive the Ferrari. Or you can go fast. And I have some experience with this.

A few years ago, in the middle of winter, our water heater went out. Died. Quit. Like Roberto Duran in his last fight with Sugar Ray. Which meant that, while we technically could still take showers, we spent of the time avoiding the water instead of actually using. Now, I know what you’re thinking, we could have used one of the other appliances in the house to warm up a pot of water and used that to bath. Well, and I’m thinking of a word here…that’s just stupid. What the hell are we? Pio-freaking-neers trekking across the Great Plains avoiding Indian raids whilst searching for the Oregon Trail? No! We have plumbing. So even the water is like Lake Michigan in January, we’re using it.

Now there are a lot of things I like. That first taste of a cold beer on a Friday after work. Youtube videos of 70’s NFL games. Being 10 feet from Dee Snider singing “We’re Not Gonna Take It”. But after a few days of cold showers, stepping into a hot one is indescribable. It’s feels like this:

But none of that helped Kinz. She stood there whining and complaining about the lack of hot water for shower. Only I couldn’t really hear her. Why? Because before I could unleash my own words of disdainful sarcasm, Mom, Rye and Bails just buried her with it. It really was breathtaking.

We haven’t had too many issues with shower since. Sometimes things just take care of themselves.

If you recall, last year I wrote a post about the reasons certain folks hate Thanksgiving. I had a lot of fun writing it. So I did it again. You can read it below. But Mom thought I was bit too rantastic, and by that she meant I was mean, in my own disdain for the Left’s feelings about Thanksgiving. So I tried to find some common ground with the Haters.

After some brief, albeit shallow, research I discovered that one of the ajor complaints about Thanksgiving among Thanksgiving Haters is the food. And, truth be told, I kinda have some sympathy for them here.

For example, yams. What the hell is a yam? Yam sounds like something Patriots fans yell when Tom Brady hits Gronk for a first down on 3rd and 15. “Yam baby! Brady is yamming the Jets today!” But it doesn’t sound like food. Turns out yams should be the Left’s favorite Thanksgiving food. 70% of the world’s yams are produced in Nigeria. They were imported from Africa to the Caribbean during the Slave trade. Yams have a bit of identity crisis and they are often mistaken for sweet potatoes and often treated and prepared as if they, in fact, are sweet potatoes. In vegetable circles, this is known as Sweet Potato Privilege. Yam interest groups, in their fight for vegetable equality, are pushing Big Vegetable to change production practices in order end institutional yamism. While efforts in the Vegetable Congress have focused on raising taxes on sweet potatoes and using the new revenue to provide free yams to consumers regardless of yam demand.

Cranberry sauce. This is not a sauce. It is also not edible. It’s a canned tube of gelatin. Cranberry sauce is jello’s a-hole cousin that nobody likes but still shows up at Thanksgiving to regale everyone with it’s tales of awesomeness while pointing out to everybody what they’re doing wrong. When not being served at Thanksgiving, it doubles as the gel used to test ballistics on spent rounds of ammunition in crime labs across the country.

Butter. I totally understand and generally endorse the use of butter to turn crescent rolls into carby, oily wonderfulness. But, and let me be clear about this, the butter on the mashed potatoes in the huge bowl should not be pooling into small ponds deep enough that if, by accident of course, a crescent roll slid off your plate into the aforementioned butter pond, it would be completely submersed and require the use of commercial tongs to retrieve. If you go to the mashed taters and Hudson Bay is present, just walk by. You can’t eat that.

Greenbean casserole. Stop trying to trick me by combining green beans with fried onions, cream of mushroom soup and cheddar cheese. They’re still green beans. And along with broccoli and cauliflower, represent a triumvirate of things I hope to avoid on Thanksgiving. Other things I hope to avoid on Thanksgiving: any discussion of broadway musicals, watching the Cowboys win, and defending my natural tendency to believe beer is always appropriate as a beverage.

Giblets. Dude, they are sealed in a bag and placed into the body cavity of the bird. That all sounds ominous. Like the turkey zombie virus is carried by the giblets so they have to be sealed in a bag to prevent an outbreak.

Marshmallows. I mean…what!? When in the hell did it become okay to 1) put marshmallows on anything other than a smore, and 2) serve them on Thanksgiving? Stop doing it. What’s next? Are you going to serve shrimp ceviche, ahi tuna and oyster casserole?

So there you have it, the Thanksgiving haters have one gripe that I’m willing to entertain. Briefly. Otherwise, shut up and enjoy the rest of your pumpkin ales and Octoberfest beers, the pie and the, well, the pie. Also just a couple more weeks until Star Wars: The Force Awakens.

When your dentist tells you that you’re on a liquid diet for the next two weeks what is your reaction?

If you’re like me it was, “Woo hoo! Every beer’s a sandwich!”

No seriously, what’s your reaction? A liquid diet severely limits the available intake. The twist is that in order to take the painkillers you can’t have an empty stomach. So you have to ingest something. Unless you enjoy pain radiating from your gums. I’ve never been on a liquid diet before. Well, not counting Friday afternoons in college. Doesn’t anybody else miss FACing? Regardless, anything that requires you to use your front teeth to bite, tear or even hold a piece of food in place is off the menu. Because, in case you forgot, you’re two front teeth are as useless as an ethics seminar for Hillary Clinton. They’re show teeth, not work teeth. And while the magic dental cement is holding your teeth in place, it’s rather painful if anything touches them – literally anything – your other teeth, your tongue, air.

My initial reaction was just a matter of fact, “well if that’s what the deal is, I’ll figure it out.” My subsequent reaction was “Crap, he really said liquid diet for two weeks.” So we stopped at the grocery store before heading home from the dentist. We made a short list that essentially was “stuff that I could put in a blender.” But the thing I didn’t really think about was walking through the grocery store around 9:30 on a Thursday night looking like John McClane after that night in the Nakatomi Building might be somewhat disconcerting for other grocery store patrons. Unless it’s Halloween, nobody really expects to see a guy with blood spatter all over his face and shirt in the grocery store. Well, unless its a random drunk millennial couple who took a selfie while picking out some organic frozen pizza on the way home from the bar and was deservedly punched in the face. That wouldn’t shake me or any other Gen Xer at all. Probably get a few head nods and an “about freaking time” comment. But nobody expected to see a 45 year-old dude with a top lip the size of a zeppelin with stitches poking out of it walking around the grocery store with bananas, blueberries, raspberries, protein powder and milk. What? Smoothies man, smoothies. You can’t put nachos in the blender.

So after my weird shower where I couldn’t feel the water hitting my face, I took the painkillers and drank the smoothie. Didn’t sleep much. I was afraid to close my mouth. Or move my tongue. I was jarred awake at one point after I presumably, albeit unconsciously, introduced my replanted teeth to my permanent teeth on the bottom row. Mom had set the alarm for exactly 8 hours after I took the initial dose of painkillers so I could take the next dose and avoid “chasing the pain.” So I had another smoothie. Then I had the stark realization that until I ceased looking like Marko the Albanian crimelord after Liam Neeson beat the crap out of him in Taken, I was going to be drinking smoothies and nothing else. Two things here. First, it wasn’t like drinking the smoothies was easy. I had to tip my head back and pour the smoothie into my mouth without any of it touching my front teeth. Not as simple as it sounds. I’m serious. Go do it right now. Tough isn’t it? Second, you quickly get to the point that you decide that being hungry is preferable to consuming anything. It was such a freaking production, and not to mention still painful, that it was easier to determine how much I actually needed to consume in order to the take the painkillers. Turns out not much.

Saturday morning, and I assume this was because she wanted to torture me, Mom went out to Panera and got the girls some breakfast. The only item that wasn’t fully consumed was a cinnamon roll. Yes, cinnamon rolls are kinda soft. And yes, I did put some thought into mixing it with milk in the blender. But in the end I just decided it wasn’t worth it. But just before taking the girls to the mall, Mom took the time to cut it up into tiny pieces. And I mean tiny. Like Barbie size pieces. Like Barbie and Ken, using Barbie sized plates and forks could each have had one of these tiny pieces on those plates while using those forks and it would have looked like a photo from the 1977 JCPenny Christmas catalog.

So you can guess what happens next. In words of Joel Goodson in Risky Business, “Sometimes you just gotta say, what the f*&#.” Or you throw caution to the wind and eat the cinnamon roll. You kind of chew with your tougue and your molars. Mostly your tongue. Oh, and you never actually close your mouth. Go ahead. Try it. It’s not easy. You eat less but it takes a long time. You smash the tiny pieces of cinnamon roll against you molars. I also tried this with tiny pieces of pineapple and cantaloupe. Tested a couple soups. And then eventually moved on to oatmeal. Lots and lots of oatmeal.

Thankfully I’m about 8 weeks post impact and if I hadn’t told you this story you’d never notice that any of this happened. You might ask why I lost some weight but there’s really no noticeable difference save a small scar on my top lip. A week after it happened the dentist did a double root canal on each tooth. It was pretty uneventful. Two weeks after that she took off the bonding that was the front of the teeth and then about 2 and a-half weeks after that she took the bonding off the back of the teeth. In her words, the ligaments and the gums are healing surprisingly really well. She’s going to write an article about me and submit it to a dental journal. Turns out while I’m 45, my teeth my gums are only 12. Teeth are solid. Don’t get me wrong, there’s a better chance the media recognizes that Bernie Sanders sounds a lot like the totalitarian national socialists of 1930’s Germany than a 60’s era socialist than I take a bite of an apple or even a sandwich. But I’m fine cutting everything into manageable pieces.

So you’re wondering, have I learned anything from this experience. Well, yes. I bought a catcher’s mask and won’t pitch to the girls without it. Also, after people experience something painfully stressful, I completely get why they might be a bit jumpy when it comes to doing it again. Additionally, I might write a quick full-proof weight loss plan based on consuming nothing other than liquids and soft foods cut into tiny pieces. Finally, I believe I’ve found the phrase that best describes this:

We arrive at the dentist’s office about 10 minutes after leaving the ER. Despite my skepticism, the anesthetic was still working so I felt okay…for a guy who was just smashed in the face with a line drive and had his top lip sewn back together and was holding his front teeth in a container filled with milk. So it’s all relative I guess. Dentist does a quick calculation on the amount of time the teeth have been out of my mouth and says “Well, if they’re intact, we’ll replant them.”

Okay, so two things here. Replanting teeth is exactly what it sounds like. And it turns out I was actually pretty lucky with the result of the impact. I’ll explain.

My now free range and cage free teeth were perfect. No cracks, no chips, no fractures, nothing. The impact of the ball simply ejected them from their original location in my mouth. Also, I had absolutely no damage to any other teeth in my mouth. No cracks, no chips, no fractures, nothing. Plus the two teeth on either side of my front teeth weren’t even loose. They were hanging in there like the ’92 Bills in the divisional round against the Oilers. Gums were enflamed, extremely bloody and sore but the teeth were solid. X-Rays showed that I also had managed to escape without any fractures to the bone below my nose and above my teeth. Nose wasn’t broken either. No concussion. Ball didn’t hit me in the eye, the forehead, the jaw or the ear. My face is evidently constructed much like a Terminator’s…albeit one that, without warning or anesthetic, essentially had it’s front teeth involuntarily removed with near surgical precision by a line drive. By a 13 year-old girl.

So the dentist wanted to replant them so the gums could heal with the teeth in there and then, when they eventually have to put replacement teeth in, everything will be healthy. Or something like that. He also told me that none of this should really work either because I’m 45. Replanting the teeth normally is only possible, and only works, on kids and teenagers. Something about blood flow in the gums. When you’re 45 and you take a line drive to the mouth, in the words of the dentist, “it’s like a grenade went off and there are broken teeth, pieces and fractures everywhere.” I had none of that. Hence the plan to replant. Only problem is the teeth had been out of mouth for a little over an hour. And once you get past an hour, the success rate goes down.

Anyway, replanting requires more needles to the face and to roof of my mouth. Again, unpleasant. But at this point, who really gives a crap? The dentist fishes out the first tooth from the cup of milk and says to Mom, “Do you have a picture of him smiling? I want to put them back in as close to what they were.” And trust me on this, as long as he didn’t put them in backwards, I really didn’t care if they looked like they had previously.

He consults the pic then tips me back in the chair so my head is now the lowest part of my body. After several tries to get the first tooth in it becomes apparent, to me anyway, that the anesthetic from the ER has completely worn off and the stuff administered by the dentist hasn’t kicked in. Since teeth only survive so long out of your mouth, the time crunch meant the anesthetic really didn’t have the requisite time to take effect. So it felt like he was trying to push a nail into my gums. I’m sweating like a fat kid who is last in line at Krispy Kreme and Mom has to literally hold down one my legs down because it started shaking. Turns out, if you have an unpleasantness ranking, this is far more unpleasant than the whole needle in the roof of your mouth thing.

So the dentist says, “I’m going to give you some stronger anesthetic and hopefully it works. But here’s the deal, we gotta get these teeth in so it really comes down to whether or not you can take the pain.”

“Doc, put those fu@#ers back in.”

So he did. They put two cotton balls under my top lip to keep it away from my gums and then they stuck two torture devices in the back of my mouth that literally wedged it open. It’s like two mini car jacks on your molars. It wasn’t enjoyable. But the anesthetic thankfully kicked in and, once the teeth were replanted, he used some kind of magic dental bonding agent and cemented the two replanted teeth together and then to the teeth on either side placing the dental cement on both the front and back of the teeth. The idea being that the teeth need to be held in place while the gums heal and reattach to the teeth. And remember how I told you that my head was the lowest part of my body? Yeah, so all that anesthetic kind of pooled in the middle of my face. I couldn’t feel my nose, my eyes, the top of my mouth and most of my eyebrows. Yeah, that felt weird. Ever try to take contacts out when you can’t feel your eye balls?

Mom drove me back to my truck, I smirked at the bloody hand prints, and drove home. She stopped at the 24 hour pharmacy, and I waited at home. And listen, I was like Bigfoot going after wayward hikers when she got home with the painkillers. I still couldn’t feel my nose or eyes but it was starting to wear off in my gums. Took the painkillers, took a shower and tried to calm down. And I really started to think about how the hell I was going to eat anything…